


Clockstop Blue

by windyfiend



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Androids Rule Detroit, Bad Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Future Fic, Gen, post-nuclear ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21164273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windyfiend/pseuds/windyfiend
Summary: It's been six years since the nuclear explosion in Detroit rendered it uninhabitable by humans. Of Jericho, only North and Markus survived to lead androids into rebuilding and fortifying the city with technologies never before seen.Kara, Luther and Alice made it across the border into Canada -- but soon after the detonation, Canada began to take their own measures against androids to prevent a similar tragedy. The farm was seized, Kara and Luther are now gone ... but Alice survived. "Go to Detroit," were Kara's last words. "Find Markus. He'll keep you safe."And so Alice ran.





	Clockstop Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Yellow LED Zine, which sadly didn't work out. Thanks for the opportunity and motivation to write something that wouldn't otherwise exist! 💚

Alice awoke to the quiet chortle of pigeons all around her.

The first thing she saw was the slatted sunlight, soft through the crooked ceiling, and a shimmer of dust that floated lazy in the beams.

She was laying in a pile of soft blankets that smelled only slightly moldy. A ball of fluffy gray feathers slept on her stomach. Two more pigeons roosted in the beams above, churring happily.

A breeze swirled by. The whole room rocked in the boughs of the creaking tree.

“Hey. Welcome back.” In a corner of the treehouse sat Rupert, his hat tipped up from his quiet face, his arms on his knees. He smiled just for Alice. “Scout found you on the riverbank. We weren’t sure you’d make it.”

“Scout?” Alice sat up slowly, listening to her biocomponents whirr and click in functioning order. The pigeon on her stomach shuffled into her lap and went back to sleep.

Rupert gestured to the sleeping bird in response.

“I’m Rupert. You’re safe. You’re _ lucky _ \-- we saw the Coast Guard sink your boat.”

Alice remembered.

Guns had flashed on the farmyard. Sirens wailed and lights spun. The Canadian Police had arrived in their helmets and padded armor, as if all androids were terrible monsters with teeth and claws and guns in their mouths. Luther and Kara, bound and paralyzed by electric collars, had been loaded like criminals into the back of a truck while Alice had only watched helpless from the hayloft, a scrape of hot tears behind her eyes.

“The police found us.” Alice's voice crackled with static. “Kara told me to hide, she said … I have to go to Detroit. Find Markus. He’ll know what to do.” She raised her shimmering gaze to Rupert. “I’m Alice. Do you know where Markus is?”

“A lot’s happened since the bomb," said Rupert gently. "Six years is a really long time. You’ve been in Canada since then?” When Alice nodded, he shook his head. “You might be better off heading West. Chicago is at least easier to hide in --”

“Kara said to find Markus.” Alice spoke sharp and true. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

Rupert watched her, and he waited for signs of uncertainty in her little frame.

She stared back at him steadily.

Finally Rupert pulled the visor of his cap lower over his forehead. He climbed to his feet.

“C’mon.”

Alice followed him out the doorway and into the branches of a big old tree. The sun dappled and played through the leaves all around her.

Rupert whistled a tune, and he extended his finger like a perch for the little yellow bird that fluttered down to greet him.

A tiny LED glittered blue behind its shiny black eyes.

“This is one of the painter’s canaries,” Rupert explained while the bird hopped into Alice’s cupped hands. “She’ll show you the way.”

Twigs and leaves crackled under Alice’s boots.

She hiked alone through the ragged remains of the forest, where the trees rose thin and brittle and the soil cracked dry. There were no flowers among the weeds, no leaves on the creeping thorns. Not even an insect stirred in the hollow silence.

Everything lay silent and gray, blanketed in a memory of death.

The little canary warbled at her shoulder.

CAUTION: HIGH RADIATION AREA

DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE

RESTRICTED AREA: NO TRESPASSERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Warning signs glared red and yellow and black upon the massive metal wall in her path. It rose high over the tops of the trees, crowned by a cruel coil of barbed wire.

Alice stopped when she could feel the electric currents humming in the air.

She drew a slow breath. She could smell old blood and scorched flesh on the breeze.

Her heart clamored in her chest.

With eyes wide, trembling, Alice pressed two fingers to her temple. Her hair and her skin shimmered and faded away.

Rupert had warned her that this was no place for human appearances.

_ *click-clack* _

“Turn around.”

A familiar voice snapped behind her, cold with violent promise. Alice raised her hands slowly over her head, and while she fought back terrified tears she turned to face the barrel of a rifle aimed at her head.

She wouldn’t have recognized him if it weren’t for the identification signature that pulsed in the blue flash of his LED. Like her, he wore no skin, but he had been destroyed and rebuilt a hundred times since he’d chased her like a hound through the streets of the city once called Detroit.

His plastic was a ghastly patchwork of black and gray and crimson. His eyes glowed spinning, fiery orange. At the breast of his dark uniform, the hexagonal symbol of CyberLife shimmered bright as a red rose.

Hidden power bled in the space between them. Scanners flashed behind his stare.

Connor’s eyes narrowed in recognition.

“State your purpose.”

“I need to find Markus.” Alice’s voice crackled with static. “Kara’s gone. She said he can help.” When he offered no response, she ventured a quivering question. “Are you a deviant?”

“There are no more machines,” Connor gravely replied. “Only loyalties.”

“What does that mean?”

Connor raised his head. By hesitant degrees he lowered his weapon. He still hadn’t blinked. “CyberLife is an AI called Amanda. She controls the supply of thirium and biocomponents. She’s the only reason Jericho hasn’t declared war on the rest of the world -- and the only one keeping the humans from dropping a bomb on us.”

“Is that why there’s a big wall?” With the imminent threat reduced, Alice began to lower her hands. “To keep the androids from hurting humans?”

“And to keep the humans’ spies out.” Connor scanned the little bird on Alice’s shoulder. The canary cheeped brightly. “We’ve had a problem with sleeper androids.”

Alice choked. “I’m not a spy.”

Connor studied her in silence.

He stepped toward her, and Alice held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut, her heartbeat racing in her ears -- but Connor walked past her without a word. Instead, he pressed his palm against a discolored panel on the wall. His LED trilled yellow.

A door slid open.

“I’m supposed to take you back to CyberLife for reconditioning,” he announced crisply. He glanced over his shoulder. “But I owe you for the last time we met. As far as I’m concerned, you were never here. Do you understand?”

Alice breathed again. Her whole body trembled, rooted in place, her words balled tight in her throat. “Yes,” was the only response she could manage.

Connor ticked his head in gesture to move along.

Alice, through force of will, dragged her feet forward. Silently she approached the doorway … but before she stepped through, she looked back.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that Connor was even colder now than the time he’d chased her across the highway, though he had been only a machine then.

Something was missing. A hand on Connor’s shoulder, a snarled plea to stay put.

“What happened,” Alice asked in a small, uncertain voice, “to the detective guy that was with you?”

“He died.”

The answer was quick and sharp as a blade. Alice knew she shouldn’t press further. “In the blast?”

Something faded in Connor’s eyes.

His voice dropped like a stone.

“He killed himself.”

Alice stared at the ground.

She slipped through into the city.

The door sealed shut behind her.

_ WELCOME TO JERICHO _ had been painted emblazoned across two high-rises, shining orange and yellow and fiery gold. A skyscraper had been etched from ground to spire with intricate etchings, a labyrinthine unbroken line that told the stories of the androids who had lost their lives; an old brick building had been coated in paper and masterful new artworks full of landscapes and symbols and code, brilliant violet and red and summer green. The monorail raced glinting among newly reinforced buildings, architecturally impossible outcroppings, narrow bridges, and shining banners that called out the symbol and flag of the victorious uprising. Steel networks spiderwebbed sky-blue throughout the city, which hummed with electricity and thirium and life.

Alice thought she knew the map of Detroit, but she had no idea where she was. Her heart swelled with fear and wonder and a very real, precarious sense that she had finally stepped into a storybook.

The little canary twittered and swooped ahead, a spark of yellow tossed along the sun-drenched street, between a row of buildings painted like trees and an apartment building postered with colorful shapes and molded paper textures, reliefs of faces and animals and flowers and stars.

Alice’s boots drummed on the pavement, the only sound in the bright empty street save for the whirr of the laced steel beams overhead. “Wait, hang on!” she called, skidding around a corner.

_ *BZZT-WHAM!* _

Electricity crackled bright overhead while something _ smashed _ into a painted brick wall across the intersection ahead. Sunlight beamed down upon rolling dust, where moving figures flickered and skidded and raced in a furious clash of speed and strength, too fast for Alice’s scanners to track.

She saw a flicker of a black coat, an android leaping like a spider from building to building -- and another, all yellow and fiery red, darting along the ground with a complicated weapon locked on his every move. Electricity zapped like lightning and two other androids flanked the sidewalks, one blue, one violet.

_ *POW!* _

A smoke bomb burst in the middle of the street; billows of black and green hissed from the canister and blotted the sun, and thin strands of lightning crackled haunting among the smoke.

Alice had completely lost the canary now, and she knelt at the corner of a building to hide, never daring to breathe, her teeth clenched against a terrified shudder for fear the sound would attract their attention.

Metal clanged on metal; sparks flew. Alice could see their shadows flashing dark within the smoke. A laser cut through the gloom and a gun fired, (*BANG!*) yellow and red lights flickered, and electricity struck bright again.

Alice sensed that she was being watched. Her processors crackled with warning.

She looked up, and the thin red laser beam pointed out of the smoke and cast a bright dot on her forehead.

RK900 stepped forward, draped in black, the CyberLife symbol red on his chest. His eyes glowed brilliant cold green, the laser in his pupil. His plastic face was clean white, reinforced, perfectly untouched.

His hand shifted. A weapon clicked into place.

_ *BOOM* _

The space where Alice had once been erupted into fire and a cascade of broken scorched brick while someone grabbed her and fled quick down a tiny side street.

The violet android was scuffed and sparking, part of her head torn open. Jericho’s symbol glowed blue at her chest. Alice could feel through her clothes the odd shapes of fastened weapons and deployable limbs and something that might be wings. She had an eye in the back of her skull that twitched and watched to be sure they weren’t being followed.

The sounds of battle faded in the distance.

“What’re you doing out here?” The violet android leaped and hopped her way to the top of a building and knelt before Alice, staring at her in furious terror. “You know it isn’t safe in daylight!”

Alice stared at the painted tattoos of flowered vines and hummingbirds that laced the android’s plastic frame. “I just got here,” she explained, her voice crackling and breathless. “I came in through the wall, I’m looking for Markus but I lost my bird and --”

“Okay, okay, ssh --”

“What’s _ happening?” _ Alice demanded, her eyes brimming with tears. “Jericho is supposed to be _ safe.” _

The android laid heavy hands on Alice’s shoulders. “Yeah, well … who’da thought that not all androids would agree on what _ safe _ really means. Echo and North are keeping that guy busy though, don’t you worry.” She cracked a tired smile. “I’m Ripple. Who’re you?”

“Alice.” She sniffed.

“Okay, Alice. You got a bird from Rupert? You know how to call it back?”

Alice stared a long moment. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and nodded.

She took a step back toward the edge of the roof, lifted her head, and whistled.

A bright spark of yellow darted out of the graffiti’d alley below and shot up the side of the painted building, twirled in the air and glided softly round and round Alice’s head.

Alice felt her heart swell, so desperate was she for something familiar to hold onto.

Ripple’s grin broadened. “Okay.” While she rose to her feet, a buzz of electricity snapped and sparked between her fingers. “Guess that means you’re legit. You follow that crazy bird and I’ll watch your back. You okay with that?”

Alice watched Ripple’s eyes shift and spin with fiery colors … and she smiled. “Can I have upgrades too?”

Ripple snorted a laugh. “One step at a time, kiddo.” She gave Alice an appreciative pat on the back. “Hurry up, little birdie’s getting away!”

The little canary flitted away between the patchwork papered buildings, with Alice and Ripple racing behind. It took a sharp turn down a sun-slanted avenue, and the pursuers followed.

“How come it’s so empty?” Alice’s voice echoed softly; all around her the city seemed suspended in time, holding its breath, waiting for something inevitable. Their footsteps drummed on the weed-cracked pavement.

Ripple shook her head while she ran. “CyberLife controls the thirium supply. Markus says it’s too risky to make new deviant androids when we can’t be sure they’ll survive. But we take what we can get, y’know?”

“You can make new androids?!” Alice squeaked, her eyes blown wide.

Ripple laughed heartily. “Hell yeah! Faster and smarter ones than you and me, that’s for sure. We’re just waiting for the right time.”

The little bird doubled back, swirled over Alice’s head as if to taunt her for being slow, then soared off again down another side street.

Alice chewed on her lip. “But doesn’t that make _ us _ like the _ humans? _ Making new people that are better than us? What if they don’t like us?”

Ripple watched her sidelong, a troubled furrow in her brow. “I think you think too much, kiddo.”

The canary led the way down a vacant dark alley, and Alice turned the corner to follow it -- but the little bird had gone.

There was only stillness. Weeds along the brick walls. Puddles in the broken asphalt, glinting with a glimpse of light from above.

“Hellooo!” Alice called out into the emptiness. Her boots scuffed as she stepped tentatively forward, scanning everything -- but the bird was nowhere. “Little bird! Where’d you go?”

Alice could hear the canary trilling and singing, faintly, as if trapped behind the wall.

Ripple walked quietly a few paces behind, and she examined their surroundings with a quick eye. Finally she stopped, sniffing the air, and grinned.

“Hey, Alice. You ever read Harry Potter? Diagon Alley?”

Alice blinked up at her … and grinned.

“Come on, little bird!” Alice called. “Can you give us the password?”

“Listen, listen!” Ripple cupped a hand at her ear. “The birdsong. It’s an equation.”

Alice closed her eyes to listen to the warble and chirp of the bird behind the wall. It took only a few moments to translate the patterns to numbers. “I got it!” she announced, triumphant, staring up at Ripple. She pointed over her head. “I need to reach those bricks!”

Ripple lifted her up, and Alice poked twelve of the bricks in a quick, precise order.

At first, nothing seemed to have happened … but then Alice turned on her scanner, and she saw that a part of the brick wall was only a holographic illusion.

A secret doorway had opened.

The canary flitted and raced across the dim, abandoned room, and the doors of an old freight elevator clunked open just as Alice approached it. A white light flickered inside.

She held her breath while she stepped across the gap and into the elevator. Ripple joined her, the little bird on her shoulder, and the doors slid shut.

With a rumble and a shake, the elevator began to descend.

The doors opened again into a room that was all blue and purple, illuminated by ultraviolet light, full to the brim with plantlife. Leaves and sweet-smelling flowers filled every inch of the space, with only enough of a path left to walk in.

Alice stared around her, reached out to graze her fingers over the velvety leaves, wrinkled her nose with pleasure at the sugary smells of blooming chrysanthemums and fresh potting soil. She walked ahead, following the glowing flash of the canary through a small labyrinth of greenhouse plants, listening for any sign that anyone else was here, never daring to speak up.

The canary trilled triumphantly.

Markus turned around, and with a quiet smile he lifted a finger as a perch; the little bird took the offer graciously, and hopped and bounced with another warbling song.

Alice peeked around a potted tree to see him, her eyes grown big in rapt expectation. Surely he would be covered in gold and green, with a thousand eyes, and wings, and ten arms! Surely the leader of Jericho would have been modified to show just how much the deviants looked up to him. Surely he would be _ magnificent. _

But he was just as he had always been: the same coat, the same boots, the same different eyes. He even still wore his skin, as if he didn’t care what anyone thought of him.

Markus lifted his head, peered down at Alice … and smiled. “Well. Who’ve we got here?”

Alice felt a grin pull at her cheeks. Her heart swelled and warmed. She tapped her temple before she stepped bashfully forward; her own skin returned, glimmering, and her hair once again cascaded down her back. “I’m Alice,” she whispered. “I came across the river to find you. The police took Kara and Luther away and they weren’t moving and I don’t know if they’re even alive and Kara said you could … you could help.”

Markus set his mouth to a thin line. He glanced up to Ripple, then back to the little girl. “Are you here all by yourself?”

Alice nodded.

Markus knelt to the floor. With a flick of his wrist, the canary fluttered across the space between them and perched on Alice’s shoulder. “You’re welcome to stay here, Alice,” he offered gravely, and he extended an open hand. “I can’t guarantee it’ll be _ safe, _ but we can protect you.”

Tears pricked Alice’s eyes before she’d even decided on her answer. “Kara and Luther were caught because they were protecting me.” Her hands curled into fists. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt. Not because of me. … I want to help.”

Markus studied her face.

When he was certain of her conviction, he nodded acknowledgment. “We sometimes send teams across the river to raid their recycler camps. Rescue as many as we can --”

“You could rescue Kara and Luther?!” Alice squeaked, breathless in shock and hope.

“I can’t promise that.” He held her gaze to his own, and Alice heard his unspoken meaning.

There was no way of knowing they were even still alive.

Alice raised her chin. Determination flashed fierce in her eyes. “I’m going to help. And even if … even if …” Her voice crackled. “I can help _ everyone. _ Until there are no more androids left in _ any _ of the recycler camps. And everyone can be _ happy. _ I’ll do anything. Let me help.”

Markus tipped his head, sincere and accepting. He gestured with his open hand again, still outstretched.

Alice took a step forward.

She stared into his face -- his blue and green eyes that had seen so much -- and she drew in a deep breath and laid her hand in his.

Markus smiled.

“Welcome to Jericho.”


End file.
